THE ADVOCATE Don Boucher, the program director of Rhode Island Housing First.

These are dark times for Rhode Island’s homeless.

The economy’s ugly slide has proven ruinous for thousands. Smith Hill is cutting the safety net in the face of multi-million dollar deficits. The shelter population is at an all-time high.

And in the fall, the courts dismantled a series of tent cities that made the invisible visible for a time.

But amid the heartache, there is a curious bit of resolve, even boldness, among the state’s small band of homeless advocates: Rhode Island, they say, could end homelessness in a decade.

And they may be right.

This is a small state, after all. And its homeless population is even smaller, estimated at some 4500 to 5000 per year. The overwhelming majority – like the overwhelming majority of the homeless nationwide – are on the street temporarily, thrown into crisis by a fire, a lost job, or a break with a violent husband.

The chronically homeless – out on the boulevard year after year – number just 500. Maybe 1000 at the most. House them, advocates say, and the state can go a long way toward ending homelessness.

“It’s not really all that complex,” says Noreen Shawcross, former executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless and current chief of the state’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Shawcross’s prescription might have seemed hopelessly naive not so long ago. The chronically homeless, often mentally ill and drug addicted, stymied policymakers for decades.

But after years of failure, advocates say they know what works. They say they have the answer. All Rhode Island needs to end homelessness, they argue, is the political will.

‘A NORMAL, DECENT LIFE’
Jean, who asked the Phoenix to withhold his last name, still remembers his mother’s break with reality some 15 years ago. “We woke up one day and all the windows were open, it was cold as hell,” he says. “She was upstairs and she wasn’t talking in her right mind.”

It was a signature moment in the disintegration of his family life. And a sign of what was to come for Jean himself.

He would struggle with mental illness, alcohol, and marijuana. The Army National Guard discharged him early. Jean, 31, was in and out of the shelters, in and out of jail. He felt hopeless. Angry.

And then, last year, staffers with a small program called Housing First Rhode Island did something remarkable: they handed him the keys to an apartment, no strings attached.

This “housing first” approach, ascendant nationwide, is on some level quite simple: give the homeless a home. But in the three-decade course of homelessness policy, it also represents a radical break.

For years, service providers required the homeless to work their way up from a shelter to transitional housing, getting sober and practicing life skills along the way. Only when they were “ready” could they qualify for permanent housing.

Trouble was, the hardcore homeless struggled to meet the clean-and-sober standard. They lingered on the street. They wound up warehoused in shelters that were originally designed as temporary refuge.

Then in the early ’90s, New York City pioneered the new approach: instead of requiring the chronically homeless to get housing-ready, providers placed even the most destructive clients in apartments right away.

UMass racial-confrontation case may finally come to a close A racial incident that rocked Western Massachusetts two years ago may finally be laid to rest this week, as a black former UMass Amherst student charged with aggravated assault returns to court, apparently having reached an agreement with the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office.

Solving hunger is not a piece of cake Marie Antoinette lost a head not too long after she allegedly offered, “Let them eat cake” as a suggestion to hungry Parisians with no bread. While there are still plenty of people making ignorant remarks these days, very few of them are French princesses. Progress!

Library woes In an attempt to save four Boston Public Library branches that are slated to close due to budget shortfalls, some state legislators from Boston have threatened to block all state funding the library receives if it shutters any of its 26 branches.

Stars, bars, and open arms The first thing I noticed when pulling into the Preble Street parking lot on Back Cove for last Sunday’s open-carry firearm event, which had been organized to encourage Mainers to legally wear their guns in public, was the Confederate flag.

The way robots should be While Ray Kurzweil pursues the Nanotech Revolution, robotics researchers in Maine are chasing their own futuristic outcomes. Here’s what’s new on the local robot scene (didn’t know we had one of those, didja?).

Moneybags Menino Inside Boston’s political back rooms, there is a growing suspicion that Mayor Thomas Menino is sitting on millions of dollars — tens of millions, maybe as much as $400 million — that could be used to save vital city services, such as, among many examples, four branch libraries and eight community centers that are slated to be shuttered.

LIBERAL WARRIOR | April 10, 2013 When it comes to his signature issues — climate change, campaign finance reform, tax fairness — Whitehouse makes little secret of his approach: marshal the facts, hammer the Republicans, and embarrass them into action.

AT BROWN, A WIN FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS | April 11, 2013 A key Brown University oversight committee has voted to recommend the school divest from coal, delivering a significant victory to student climate change activists.

HACKING POLITICS: A GUIDE | April 03, 2013 Last year, the Internet briefly upended everything we know about American politics.

BREAK ON THROUGH | March 28, 2013 When I spoke with Treasurer Gina Raimondo this week, I opened with the obligatory question about whether she'll run for governor. "I'm seriously considering it," she said. "But I think as you know — we've talked about it before — I have little kids: a six-year-old, an eight-year-old. I'm a mother. It's a big deal."

THE LIBERAL CASE FOR GUNS | March 27, 2013 The school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut spurred hope not just for sensible gun regulation, but for a more nuanced discussion of America's gun culture. Neither wish has been realized.